Jewish Defense Organizations:
The Role of Jewish Defense Organizations in Palestine

(1903 - 1948)

Hannah
Arendt succinctly
expressed the belief of the early Zionists: “Palestine
was conceived as the place, the only place,
where Jews could escape: from Jew-hatred
... At the core of this hope ... we find
the old mentality of enslaved peoples, the
belief that it does not pay to fight back,
that we must dodge and escape in order to
survive.”1

Early Jewish Defense

Once they had escaped, the Jews expected
to be welcomed with open arms into their
homeland. When they were not, they were hesitant
to fight for what they believed was rightfully
theirs (in the early years their small number
left them incapable of fighting). This pacifistic
attitude dominated the early years of the Yishuv, but there were a few individuals
who recognized at a very early stage that
the Jews would have to fight for the land.

The earliest Jewish involvement in the violent
struggle for Palestine occurred during World
War I when Aaron
Aaronson, a prominent scientist
known for his discovery of wild wheat, organized
an intelligence service, Nili, to operate
behind Turkish lines for the British.

Other Jews realized that their fate was
largely dependent on a British victory in
the war and decided to try to join the British
forces. A group of Jewish refugees led by Joseph
Trumpeldor formed the Zion
Mule Corps in 1915 but disbanded just a year later.
A more significant contribution to the war
effort was made possible by the determination
of Zeev
Jabotinsky.

Jabotinsky asked the British to form a Jewish
brigade within the British army. The idea
was initially rejected by the British and
aroused opposition from many segments of
English Jewry. The British relented in 1918,
forming the Jewish
Legion that fought for
Palestine as Chaim
Weizmann negotiated for
it.

Setting Up a Defense

After the war, Jabotinsky continued to be an activist. In
the riots
of 1920, he and Pinchas
Rutenberg organized a defense force to protect the
Jews from the Arab onslaught; however, the
British prevented the force from entering Jerusalem. Nevertheless, Jabotinsky was sentenced
to 15 years in prison for his alleged role
in the riot. Thanks to a report absolving Jabotinsky from Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen,
the Chief Political Officer for Palestine
and Syria, the sentence was commuted.

The immediate impact of
the riots was to convince the Jewish community
in Palestine of the need to protect themselves.
The first self-defense organization, Bar-Giora,
had been established in 1907 by Yitzhak
Ben Zvi (later second president of Israel) to
protect the early settlements against Arab
mob violence. Following the riots,
the left-wing Achduth Ha’Avodah party established
the Haganah on
June 12, 1920, to protect the settlers. In
1923, Jabotinsky formed
the Betar youth movement, named after the
Roman fortress where Bar
Kochba made his
last stand in the second century, to propagate
his revisionist ideas and militant politics.

The Haganah served as the principal defense
force, but proved unable to protect the community
in the 1929
riots. Some of the more militant
members of the group led by Jerusalem commander Avraham
Tehomi split off and formed a new
organization they called Haganah
Bet.

On December 5, 1936, Tehomi signed an agreement
with Jabotinsky making Tehomi the group’s
commander and Jabotinsky its political
leader. The alliance was short-lived, however,
and Tehomi rejoined the Haganah a year later
and took about one-third of his forces with
him, agreeing to act according to the Jewish
principle of havlaga (self-defense).

Again, there was a group of members, mainly
Betarim, who weren’t willing to restrict
themselves to havlaga and advocated offensive
action. They formed a new organization that
accepted Jabotinsky’s vision and believed
that armed force was a prerequisite for the
creation of a Jewish state, that Arabs who
attacked Jews should expect retaliation,
and that no one had a right to prevent Jews
from immigrating. This organization became
known as the Irgun
Zvai Leumi (also known
as IZL, Etzel, and the National Military
Organization).

In 1937, the Irgun membership was only about
1,800. By comparison, the Haganah had approximately
17,000 men and 4,000 women under its command.

The Arab Revolt

The Jewish defenders were subdued in the
face of increasingly hostile attacks by Arabs
as the 1936-39
riots began. In September
1937, however, the Irgun retaliated for the
murder of three Jews by launching an attack
that left 13 Arabs dead. On November 14,
the Irgun began a series of attacks against
hostile Arab neighborhoods that killed ten
Arabs and wounded many more.

The attacks outraged the Jewish
Agency,
which accused the Irgun of undermining their
efforts to obtain a political settlement.
The outcry induced the Irgun to return to
the principle of havlaga, but this was only
a temporary respite.

In 1938, David
Raziel, who had organized
the November 14 attacks, became commander
of the Irgun. In that year, three Jews were
arrested by the British after an attempted
attack against the Arabs. One of the attackers
was judged mentally unbalanced and released.
The second was convicted and sentenced to
death, but had his sentence commuted because
he was under 18. The third man, Shlomo Ben-Yosef,
was sentenced to death and hung on June 29,
1938. The British saw the punishment as an
example for others, the Irgun considered
it a challenge to be confronted, and the
Arabs believed it to be an implicit endorsement
of their rebellion.

After the execution, the Irgun stepped up
its activity, attacking Arab headquarters
in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on July 4, 1938,
killing five Arabs. On the 6th, bombs placed
in milk cans exploded in a Haifa market killing
23 Arab shoppers and wounding 79. Another
bombing, this time in Jerusalem on the 15th,
killed 10 and wounded 29. A little over a
week later, on the 25th, an explosion in Haifa killed 39 Arabs and wounded 46. During
this same period 44 Jews were killed by Arabs.

In 1939, the leaders of
the Irgun were
arrested (they were released in 1940), the
Arab attacks subsided, and the world edged
into war. The year 1939 also brought the British
White Paper restricting Jewish immigration.
The Jewish community saw the White Paper
as a capitulation to Arab violence, and the
more militant Jews were determined to show
the British that “Jewish nuisance value
was no less dangerous than the Arab variety.”3

To avoid complicating .the
political struggle, the Haganah and Irgun did
not engage in overt violence in response
to the White Paper; instead, they began to
engage in illegal
immigration. According
to Bauer, 16,000 people were smuggled
into Palestine between 1938 and the outbreak
of the war.4 The British had set up
a blockade along the coast and seized ships
carrying illegal immigrants and sent them
to Mauritius. On November 25, 1940, a bomb
was placed on a ship loaded with immigrants
to protest the British policy. The bomb exploded
and the Patria sank killing 250 passengers.

The Jews in Palestine were not isolated
from world events; their immediate struggle
did not prevent them from wanting to take
part in the fight against Hitler. As Ben-Gurion said, the Jews would fight with the British
against Hitler as though there were no White
Paper and fight against the White Paper as
though there were no war. The British did
not allow the Jews to form a fighting unit
(composed of only 200 men) until September
1940, and it was not until September 20,
1944, that a Jewish
brigade was formed.

The number of Jews who enlisted
in the army was not supposed to exceed the
number of Arab enlistees and the Arabs
showed no inclination to fight Hitler.
By the end of 1941, more than 10,000 Palestinian
Jews were in the army. Meanwhile, in 1941,
the Haganah created
the Palmach to defend the Yishuv in the event
of an emergency. The attitude of the Palestine
administration was summed up by John Marlowe
when he said that the administration “with
almost unbelievable persistence devoted a
large part of its fortunately inconsiderable
energy and ability to preventing Palestinian
Jews from fighting Hitler.”5

Growing Jewish Militancy

In 1940, the Irgun split
as the more militant members of the organization,
led by Avraham
Stern, decided to form a new
group, which became known as Lohamey
Heruth Israel (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel).
It was also known as Lehi, F.F.I., and the
Stern Gang. The group was small, ill-equipped,
and had to rely on robberies for most of
its financial support. Initially, violence
was only seen as a part of the Lehi strategy
to undermine British rule; however, it eventually
came to be their sole course of action.

Bell
asserts that Lehi was
essentially anti-imperialist and sought
cooperation with the Arabs. He also claims Stern was so determined in his opposition
to England that he was willing to collaborate
with the Axis powers although nothing came
of his interest.

For the first two years of its existence, Lehi engaged in robberies and murder. On
January 9, 1942, Lehi robbed a Histadrut bank, which resulted in two Jewish employees
being killed. The British officers who witnessed
the robbery were also killed. The Jewish
community was outraged and from that point
on gave no aid to Sternists. The British
decided to put an end to the violence and
arrested or killed most of the gang. On February
12, 1942, Stern was caught and shot “trying
to escape.” Afterward, the organization
disintegrated, at least for a while. At about
the same time, the Irgun was also falling
apart, primarily as a result of the death
of its leader, David
Raziel, who had been
killed on a mission for the British.

The Holocaust Revives the Underground

The news that arrived at
the World
Zionist Organization meeting in May 1942 describing
the fate of
European Jewry gave new impetus
to the militant members of the Jewish community.
The Struma incident
that had preceded the news from Europe, in
which a ship full of illegal immigrants from Romania was
turned away from Palestine by the British
authorities and later sank, killing 768,
had already given the Sternists all the motivation
they needed to reemerge as a force to be
reckoned with.

On November 1, 1943, 20
Sternists escaped from Latrun prison.
Among them was Nathan Friedman-Yellin, who
resurrected Lehi and
became its leader. Soon after, on February
1, 1944, the new leader of the Irgun, Menachem
Begin, declared the revolt against the
British:

There is no longer
any armistice between the Jewish people
and the British Administration in Eretz
Israel which [turns - check] our brothers
over to Hitler. Our people is at war
with this regime — war to the
end... This then is our demand: immediate
transfer of power in Eretz Israel to
a provisional Hebrew government. We
shall fight, every Jew in the homeland
will fight. The God of Israel, the
Lord of Hosts, will aid us. There will
be no retreat. Freedom — or
death.6

The aim of the revolt was to undermine British
rule in Palestine. According to Begin:

History and our observation
persuaded us that if we could succeed in
destroying the government’s prestige in
Eretz Israel, the removal of its rule would
follow automatically. Thence forward we
gave no peace to this weak spot. Throughout
all the years of our uprising, we hit at
the British government’s prestige, deliberately,
tirelessly, unceasingly.7

The Irgun formally broke with the National
Zionist Organization and became financially
dependent on donations, robberies, and extortion.
The group claimed only about 600 members
compared with more than 33,000 Haganah fighters.
Of these, only a few dozen were engaged in
full-time work for the Irgun. The remainder
went on with their normal lives but were
at the organization’s disposal.

Lehi had
believed that the Irgun was not willing to fight to drive the British
out of Palestine (ironically, the Irgun had
the same view of the Haganah),
and had taken it upon themselves to do the
job. When Begin declared the beginning of
the revolt, however, Lehi found
that it was no longer fighting alone, but
while the Irgun at
least gave lip-service to the intent of attacking
only military targets, Lehi “saw
no political reason to spare the lives of
Englishmen as long as they remained in Palestine.”8Lehi had
determined that the British would not leave
Palestine because of their interests in maintaining
a military base in the Middle East, the oil
refining operations in Haifa,
and their own economic holdings.

Although it is not clear whether he was
using hindsight or found evidence of a plan,
Brenner claims that Lehi decided to undermine
British interests by posing a constant threat
to army installations and camps, interrupting
transportation with mines, and intimidating
soldiers with the threat of murder. To emphasize
this threat, Lehi members would patrol the
streets until they found a group of British
police or soldiers and then open fire on
them with submachine-guns or pistols. British
oil interests were to be sabotaged while
their economic interests were subject to
sabotage or robberies.

The violence began to escalate in February
1944. In that month, the Irgun attacked the
offices of the Immigration Department located
in Jerusalem, Tel
Aviv, and Haifa in a symbolic
protest against the closed gates of Palestine.
On the 14th, Lehi members were caught putting
up posters and shot two officers who tried
to arrest them. Two weeks later, on the 27th,
the Irgun bombed the income tax offices in Tel
Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa. The situation
deteriorated in March. On the 2nd, the Irgun wounded a policeman, and on the 13th Lehi killed a policeman. On March 19, a member
of Lehi was killed resisting arrest — four
days later, Lehi retaliated by killing two
officers and wounding a third. On the same
day, the Irgun tried to bomb the CID [Criminal
Investigation Division] stations in Jerusalem, Haifa, and Jaffa with only the Haifa bomb
causing any injuries (three dead).

The British responded by
imposing curfews on Jewish towns, engaging
in mass arrests; and instituting the death
penalty for carrying firearms. Designed to
intimidate the underground and turn the Yishuv against them, the measures had the opposite
effect. They made the underground more resolute
and the community more antagonistic toward
British rule.

The British did succeed,
however, in scaring the leadership of the Yishuv. The Jewish Agency had objected to
the dissidents’ violence
from the beginning. After the March 2 attack, Weizmann had sent a cable to the wounded
officer in which he said:

Allow me to express my
horror at the hideous crime of the attempt
against your life. I rejoice in your escape...My
ardent wish is that the evildoers should
be speedily discovered and the responsibility
fixed upon the guilty.9

The
Jewish leadership was appalled at the violence;
moreover, they were afraid the militants
would upset the British and jeopardize the
chance of a favorable disposition of the Mandate,
a possibility the leadership still believed
in. They also saw no point in the violence
except to harden the British resolve to keep
the gates closed and turn international opinion
against the creation of a Jewish homeland.
The Jewish Agency leadership also feared
that their own positions were being threatened
by the terrorists. Consequently, on April
2, the Agency formulated an official policy
to increase propaganda against the dissidents,
attempt to isolate them in the Yishuv,
and prevent their activities.

In keeping with this policy,
the Agency declared an open season on the Irgun and Lehi,
cooperating whenever possible with the British
administration. After two British officers
were gunned down on April 1, the names of
those responsible were given to the authorities,
who surrounded a Lehi hideout
and killed one man and left two more with
a choice of surrender or suicide — they
chose the latter.10

Many of the dissidents were
turned into the British, including Begin’s predecessor
as head of the Irgun, Yaacov
Meridor, and Shlomo
Levi. Both eventually escaped and then
were recaptured. Meridor
didn’t return until
the day before the establishment
of Israel and Levi made it back several
weeks later. When the dissidents came to
trial they made it a practice to engage in
the symbolic gesture of refusing to accept
the jurisdiction of the British courts in
Palestine. Their statements made no difference
in the outcome of the trials but did help
to disseminate their views throughout the
world, particularly to American Jews, as
a result of the extensive press coverage
they received. On June 20, a member of Lehi was
given the death sentence for the first time,
but it was commuted after the Sternists threatened
a blood bath if he was hung.

The “season” made
things more difficult for the underground,
but the membership remained undaunted, particularly
as evidence of the Holocaust began
filtering out of Europe. On July 6, Moshe
Shertok, the director of
the Jewish Agency’s political department
asked the British foreign minister, Anthony
Eden, to order the Allied air forces to bomb
the railways and concentration
camps in Hungary. By the time Shertok received
the negative reply it was too late for most
of Hungarian Jewry. This intransigence, combined
with the British immigration policy, heightened
the dissidents’ resolve to fight.

The Revolt

As Yom
Kippur approached in 1944, Begin announced
that the shofar would
be blown at the Western
Wall, an act that had been
prohibited by the British since the 1929
riots. On September 27, the shofar again
sounded through the streets of Jerusalem while
at the same time the Irgun was
attacking four different British fortresses.
Bell sees this event as a major psychological
victory for the Irgun because
they had forced the British into a “humiliating
withdrawal” to
avoid a confrontation at the Western
Wall.
In addition, the failure of the British to
retaliate for the attacks on the fortresses
indicated the “British could he challenged
successfully, and that, as anticipated, Britain
would not pursue a policy of vengeance. All
the professed fears of the Jewish Agency
were groundless.”11

The dissidents’ success gave them
renewed confidence and led them to believe
the time had come for a more daring plan,
one that would focus world attention on Palestine
and punish the British for their complicity
in the Holocaust. The decision was made to
assassinate the British
High Commissioner in Palestine, Sir Harold MacMichael, but
several attempts on his life failed. Lehi decided on another target, a man who also
could be blamed for the fate of European
Jewry, Walter Edward Guinness, better known
as Lord Moyne.

Lord Moyne was a well-known
Arabist and Anti-Zionist. He had served as
colonial secretary and was British minister
of state in Cairo. Bell reports that Joel
Brand came out of Hungary with
an offer from the Nazis to trade Jews for
trucks and was supposed to have received
the following reply from Lord Moyne: “What
would I do with a million Jews.”12

According to Gurion, a former
Irgunist, Moyne had also opposed the formation
of a Jewish Army, refused to allow the Struma to
land in Palestine, sent another ship (the Atlantic)
to Mauritius,
and had ordered the Patria there
as well before it was blown up.13

On November 6, 1944, two
members of Lehi, Eliyahu
Hakim and Eliahu
Bet-Zouri,
assassinated Lord Moyne in Cairo. At the
trial, as was their custom, the defendants
made political statements. Beit-Zouri said:

It is wrong to assume
that we represent Zionism.
In fact we represent, and we are, the real
owners of Palestine and as such we are
engaged in a struggle to free our country
from the alien rulers who have taken possession
of it.14

The assassins were hung on March 23, 1945.

Again, it may reflect hindsight, but Bell
suggests that Lehi had consciously attacked
Moyne in Cairo to show the Arabs that they
were not anti-Arab only anti-imperialism.

The attack also was meant
to show the efficacy of armed resistance
and to demonstrate that the British were
not safe anywhere as long as they remained
in Palestine. Brenner believes the assassination
did have some impact on the Arabs, particularly
in stimulating Egyptian nationalism. He also
makes an even more tenuous connection between
Moyne’s death and the assassination of a
former Prime Minister, Ahmed Mahir, who was
pro-British. Apparently, some Lehi members
advocated the formation of a “Semitic
Bloc” to liberate
the Middle East from foreign domination,
an idea which made it possible for Palestinian
Arabs to join the organization.15

The assassination of Lord
Moyne outraged the Jewish community in Palestine. Ben-Gurion called
for a “liquidation of the terror” and
appealed to the community to assist the authorities
in the “prevention of acts of terror
and the elimination of its perpetrators.” It
is frequently alleged that the Jewish community
did nothing to stop the dissidents’ activities,
but the Jewish Agency did make a concerted
effort, particularly after Moyne’s death,
to bring the Irgun under
control. According to Begin,
the Agency and Haganah handed
over a large number (one British M.P. said
1,500) of Irgunists to the British. Begin was
unwilling to retaliate against his fellow
Jews: “No, not civil war,” he
said.
“Not that at any price.”16

Although Golomb succeeded
in bringing “terrorist
activity to a standstill,” when
the season ended
in June 1945, the underground emerged even
stronger:

The Haganah’s Season had
maimed without killing, created sympathy
where none had existed before, endowed
the Irgun with
a long-desired legitimacy, and when ended
assured Begin that
the great divide had been safely if painfully
passed: the revolt would have the toleration
of the Yishuv.18

The proof would not be long in coming.

The British
Elections

Chaim
Weizmann and most
of the Zionist leadership
had maintained faith in “"the
British government’s resolve to support
the fulfillment of the Balfour
Declaration despite
all that had happened in the interim. With
the upcoming British elections in 1945, many
Jewish leaders saw the possibility of their
dreams coming to fruition. The reason for
their optimism was the likelihood that the
Labor Party would emerge victorious. The
Party had endorsed the creation of a Jewish
National Home in Pales tine as Atlee wrote:

The
Labor Party recalls with pride that in
the days of the Great War they associated
themselves with the ideal of a National Home
in Palestine for the Jewish people and that
ever since...have repeatedly affirmed their
enthusiastic support for the effort towards
its realization. They...will never falter
in their active cooperation with the work
now going forward in Palestine.19

The election was easily
won by the Labor Party leading Davar to
write: “The
victory of the Labor Party...is a clear victory
for the demands of the Zionists in British
public opinion.”20 The Zionist leaders
anxiously awaited the new Prime Minister’s
initiatives on Palestine. Even the Irgun and Lehi ceased their activity to see what
the government would do.

On August 25, Weizmann was informed by the
Colonial Office that the immigrant quota
would remain at 1,500 per month. On November
13, 1945, Foreign Secretary Bevin made a
speech in Parliament which vitiated the Labor
platform with regard to Palestine, promising
only to launch another inquiry into the issue.
In Bevin’s view, England had never
countenanced the creation of a Jewish state
in Palestine, only a home.

The Jewish community in
Palestine was distraught. The dissidents
simply said: “I told
you so.” It now became clear to everyone
that the British would have to be forced
to accede to Zionist demands. To carry out
this objective, Moshe Sneh and Israel
Galili of the Haganah, Menachem
Begin of
the Irgun,
and Nathan Friedman-Yellin of Lehi met
and decided to form a united resistance movement,
Tenuat Hameri. The alliance agreed to coordinate
all actions except the procurement of arms
and money.

On October 31, 1945,
the Palmach, sank two police boats in Haifa and one in Jaffa. The Haganah also
bombed railroad tracks throughout Palestine.
The Irgun attacked
trains at Lydda station. On December 27, Irgun and Lehi blew
up the CID headquarters in Jerusalem and Haifa killing 10 and injuring 12.

The alliance engaged in sabotage and bombings
to keep the British off balance and draw
them into a guerilla war of attrition. Bell
describes the situation that prevailed in
1946:

All 20,000 men of the
Sixth Airborne Division had been moved
to the Mandate, and British troop strength
continued to rise to 80,000. There were
also thousands of police, units of the
Transjordan Arab Legion, and others attached
to security duty. There were two cruisers,
three destroyers, other naval units off
the coast, and naval radar and communication
bases on shore. The ratio of British security
forces to the Jewish population was approximately
1 to 5. By 1946 the Mandate was an armed
camp, the countryside studded with the
huge, concrete Tegart fortresses, British
army camps, reinforced roadblocks, and
observation points. The cities were constantly
patrolled, and all government buildings
protected by concertinas of barbed wire
and sentry blocks. There were armed guards
on the trains. For safety’s sake,
the British withdrew into wired and sandbagged
compounds, self-imposed ghettos. The largest,
in Jerusalem,
was dubbed Bevingrad...The newspapers in
the Mandate were censored, and travel was
restricted. The mails were monitored, as
were all overseas cable traffic. The Mandate
became a garrison state under internal
siege, and the garrison, despite its size
equipment, and determination, proved ineffectual
and self-defeating.21

The underground campaign
continued to mount. The Haganah was
primarily engaged in sabotage, the Irgun procurement
of arms, and Lehi murder.
On April 23, 1946, the Irgun attacked
a police station in Ramat Gan to steal arms.
Dov Gruner was captured in the raid and would
eventually become the group’s first
martyr. Two days after the Irgun raid, Lehi gunmen
attacked the Sixth Airborne carpark and killed
seven British soldiers. On June 10, the Irgun attacked trains in Lydda and on the Jerusalem to Jaffa route.

On the 13th, two members
of the Irgun were
convicted of capital offenses. In retaliation,
the Irgun kidnapped
six British officers on June 18 and 19.
As was usually the case, the Jewish leadership
expressed dismay at the act, but had no
influence. One hostage escaped and two
others were released, but the Irgun threatened
to kill the remaining hostages if their
men were hung by the British.

These attacks outraged
the British, who began to turn on the Jewish
population, rioting and looting in the streets,
harassing people, and reacting with increasing
severity to the slightest provocation. The
British believed the terrorists could
not function if it were not for the complicity
of the Jewish community — all Jews
were thus equally guilty. “And treated as
guilty, many Jews began to regard British
disgust as an honor, not a disgrace.”22

On June 29, the British
launched a major raid throughout Palestine
arresting more than 1,000 people including
the acting chairman of the Jewish
Agency (Ben-Gurion was out of the country), J.C.
Fishman, and Moshe
Shertok. Agency documents were also seized.
Most of the leaders of the underground evaded
capture, although one of Lehi’s leaders was
caught, his captor was eventually slain in
retaliation. By the beginning of July, 2,718
Jews had been arrested, 4 killed, and 80
wounded. The Yishuv continued
to hold contempt for the dissidents’ methods,
but became less willing to criticize them
as British
repression intensified.

The raids were not able
to locate the kidnapped British soldiers
so High Commissioner Cunningham gave in to Irgun demands
and commuted the sentences of the Irgunists.
The next day the Irgun released
the hostages. The episode demonstrated once
again to the Irgun that
the British could be forced to capitulate.
At the same time, the Irgun tried
to show the British they meant what they
said. Begin stresses the point in The
Revolt that the
Jewish community as well as the British could
count on the Irgun to
fulfill its promises. To their own misfortune,
the British were still not convinced.

The Outrage

In the eyes of the Irgun,
the British raids confirmed the naiveté of
the Jewish leadership. They had believed
themselves immune from police retaliation
and now found their headquarters occupied
and many secret documents in British hands.
The Irgun had
little trouble deciding on an appropriate
response. According to Begin,
the Irgun believed
that the scope of the reprisal should equal
the magnitude of the attack. It followed
from this notion that the proper retaliation
for the attack on Jewish headquarters would
be an attack on British headquarters.23

British headquarters had been set up during
the war in the southern wing of the King
David Hotel in Jerusalem. The hotel served
as both the military and civil administrative
headquarters and was, not surprisingly, extremely
well guarded and heavily fortified. The Irgun plan was to smuggle bombs into the hotel
and set them on a timer that would allow
the building to be evacuated. Begin stressed
the desire to avoid civilian casualties and
said three telephone calls were placed, one
to the hotel, another to the French Consulate,
and a third to the Palestine
Post, warning
that explosives in the King
David Hotel would
soon be detonated.

On July 22, 1946, the calls
were made. The French Consulate, located
near the hotel, received the call and opened
the building’s windows as they had been instructed.
The Palestine Post also received a call.
The call into the hotel was apparently received
and ignored. Begin quotes
one British official who supposedly refused
to evacuate the building saying: “We
don’t take orders from the Jews.”24 As a result, when the bombs
exploded, the casualty toll was
high — a total of 91 killed and 45
injured. Among the casualties were 15 Jews.
Bell acknowledged the Irgun’s attempt
to avoid civilian injuries by noting that
few people in the hotel proper were hurt
in the blast.”25

The bombing attracted the
world’s attention. Two days after the bombing
Atlee said: “The
British Government have stated and stated
again they will not be diverted by acts of
violence in their search for a just and final
solution to the Palestine problem.”26 The Jewish leadership issued the usual denunciations
but the British were convinced the Haganah and
Jewish Agency were responsible. The widespread
publicity naturally cast the entire Jewish
community as accomplices to terrorists. The
negative publicity convinced the Jewish leaders
that it was time to distance themselves from
the dissidents; consequently, the Haganah withdrew
from the underground alliance (on August
23).

Fallout

The disintegration of the
alliance did not represent a setback to the
Jewish underground because the Jewish
Agency was not willing to return
to the earlier policy of cooperation with
British officials. By denouncing the terrorists,
the Jewish leadership could avoid the negative
impact of being associated with the actions.
Brenner cites three reasons why the Tenuat
Hameri benefitted Lehi, which can also be
applied to the Irgun:

First, the F.F.I. had
become more acceptable in the public eye,
because the Haganah, the recognized Jewish
armed force, had engaged in the same kind
of warfare as they did. Secondly, as the
British forces had indiscriminately killed
unarmed people in Tel Aviv and elsewhere,
and had sometimes behaved in a most unpopular
manner, even those who were strongly opposed
to violence did no longer regard it as
their duty to assist the police in the
prevention of acts of terrorism and the
apprehension of the perpetrators. Finally,
the political situation in general had
deteriorated rather than improved. The
survivors of the European holocaust were
not permitted to land in Palestine, and
their many relatives and acquaintances
there felt personally, as well as po1itically,
outraged by the British policy of “closed
gates.”27

Irgun attacks
resumed and intensified soon after the King
David bombing. On October
31, 1946, they bombed the British Embassy
in Rome and, for the first time, made their
presence felt in London where Irgun killers
were rumored to be stalking potential victims.
Public demands for stopping the terrorists
became more vociferous and the British government’s
response more brutal.

In December, two members
of the Irgun were
arrested during a bank robbery and were sentenced
to prison and a flogging.
The Irgun let it be known that they would
retaliate in kind if the sentence was carried
out. On December 27, one of the men was given
18 lashes.

The Irgun issued
another warning: “You
will not whip Jews in their Homeland. And
if Briish authorities whip them, British
officers will be whipped publicly in return.”
The Irgun captured
four British officers and gave them
each 18 lashes before releasing them. Afterward
the Irgun defiantly
warned: “If
the oppressors dare in the future to abuse
the bodies and the human and national honor
of Jewish youths, we shall no longer reply
with the whip. We shall reply with fire...”
No one was ever whipped again in Palestine.28

The British Cave

The year 1947 began just
as the previous years following the war — with
violence and recriminations. On January 26,
Dov Gruner’s
death sentence was confirmed and the Irgun vowed
to hang a British soldier for every Jew who
was put to death. To emphasize their threat,
they kidnaped two Englishmen, a judge
and a retired officer. The Yishuv response was typically outraged. Just a few
days earlier (January 21), the Palestine
Post reported:

Repudiation by the Yishuv
and the Zionist movement of murder and
the shedding of innocent blood as a means
of political resistance. The Yishuv will
defend itself with the necessary force
against domination and coercion, intimidation
and threats, the extortion of money, and
the use of force.

The Jewish
Agency was unable to ascertain
the whereabouts of the kidnap victims; however,
they did learn that Gruner was not going
to be hung. When the Irgun received this
information they released their captives
unharmed.

On March 1, the Irgun initiated
16 actions including the bombing of the officer’s
club in Bevingrad, which killed 20 and wounded
30. Lehi was
also active. On the 13th, they destroyed
two oil transport trains. Two weeks later,
Sternists robbed a Tel
Aviv bank .and on
the 30th, they set 30,000 tons of oil on
fire at the Haifa refinery. April was an
equally violent month. On the 16th, Dov Gruner
and three other Irgunists were hung in Acre prison provoking the most serious warning
yet issued by the Irgun:

We will no longer be bound
by the normal rules of warfare. In [the]
future every combatant unit of Irgun will be accompanied by a war court of the
Jewish Underground Movement. Every enemy
subject who is taken prisoner will immediately
be brought before the court, irrespective
of whether he is a member of the Army or
Civilian Administration. Both are criminal
organizations. He will be tried for entering
illegally into Palestine, for illegal possession
of arms and their use against civilians,
for murder, oppression and exploitation;
there will be no appeal against the decision
of the people’s
court. Those condemned will be hanged
or shot.29

Since the British did not
see the terrorists as an army operating under
normal rules of warfare, they no doubt saw
little reason to expect a change in their
behavior. They were wrong.

Two members of Lehi were
to be hung on April 21 and the Irgun tried
unsuccessfully to kidnap soldiers to use
as a threat. Rather than hang, however, the
two men committed suicide. On April 22, Lehi fighters
attacked an army transport near Rehovot.
The following day the Cairo-Haifa train was
ambushed and 8 people were killed and
27 wounded. On the 24th, Lehi destroyed
the headquarters of the British Mobile Force
and 4 soldiers were killed in an unrelated
incident when their truck hit a mine. The
following day 4 people were killed by a bomb
at a police station in Sarona. The violence
continued yet another day as a Haifa CID
chief, an inspector, and 3 other officers
were killed in Tel Aviv.30

Jailbreak

The events of April were
a mere prelude to the spectacular attack
planned for May: the target, Acre prison.
Acre was a centuries old fortress which had
withstood attacks from some of the world’s
most awesome armies, including Napoleon’s.
The fortress now housed a prison holding
hundreds of captured underground fighters.
A former Irgunist, Itzhak Gurion, explained
the motivation for attacking Acre:

The Irgun now concentrated
on this fortress with the aim of delivering
a death-blow to British prestige, of forestalling
the new Bevin intrigues and of warning
the UN not to draw out the Palestine deliberations.31

Although the Acre operation
was successful, there were several Irgunists
who were captured. On June 9, the Irgun captured
two policemen to use as bargaining chips
but they escaped. Meanwhile, the United
Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was
on its way to Palestine and the Jewish leadership
wanted to curb underground activities. While
their activities were being curtailed, five
of the Irgun’s
members were being sentenced, three to death,
for their part in the Acre attack.

On June 24, the Chairman of the UNSCOP,
Emil Sandstrom of Sweden, assistant to the
Committee, Dr. Ralph Bunche of the United
States, and Sandstrom’s secretary,
Dr. Victor Hoo of China met secretly with Begin to obtain his opinion on a settlement
for Palestine. Begin outlined the Irgun’s
aims:

1) The Irgun considers Eretz Israel as the
land of the Jewish people.
2) Eretz Israel consists of both sides
of the Jordan, including Transjordan. “Transjordan”...is
an English term that is incorrect. In the
original Hebrew both sides of the Jordan
were, in effect, called Transjordan.” The
early Hebrews... first conquered what is
today known as Transjordan and crossed
into Palestine from east to west. The Irgun
considers the whole territory as Jewish
territory and aims at the creation of a
Jewish Republic under a democratic government.
3) Immediate repatriation of all Jews wishing
to be repatriated to Palestine.
The exact number of Hebrew repatriates is
unknown but runs into the millions. A choice
should be given to all Jews who wish to return
to Palestine. Their return is prevented only
by British illegal rule and by British armed
force, which should be removed. A Jewish
government would undertake the repatriation
of Jews with international help.
4) We reject any statement made by the Labor
Party as to the transfer of any Arabs from
the country. There is enough room in Palestine
for all, both Jews and Arabs.
5) Since Britain has decided to keep the
country under her own control by force
of arms, there is no other way to accomplish
our aims than to meet force with force.32

The fourth point is particularly
interesting in light of the claim that would
be in the months ahead — especially
after Deir
Yassin — that the Irgun was trying to drive the Arabs out of Palestine.
The reader should have noticed that the recitation
of terrorist acts did not include a single
operation against the Arab population of
Palestine. It should also be noted that the
Palestinian Arabs made no effort to join
in the revolt or take any independent action
to drive the British out of their homeland.

The UNSCOP had tried to
resurrect the old absorptive capacity argument
and argue that the number of Jews was a cause
of Arab resentment. Begin pointed
out that 5 to 7 million people had lived
in Palestine in ancient times and he saw
no reason why the land could not support
a similar population now. Arab resentment
he attributed to British instigation. Although
he acknowledged some Arabs were threatening
war over partition, Begin did
not feel it should effect the UN
decision. Begin also voiced his opposition
to partition. He opposed it on principle
because of his belief that all of Palestine
was part of the biblical Jewish homeland.

How much of an impression Begin made
on the commission is unclear; however, two
of the other members of the UNSCOP, Garcia-Granados
of Guatemala and
Fabregat of Uruguay also
spoke with Begin and
were the main proponents of the majority
plan. Throughout the UN debate, these two
men were the staunchest supporters of the
Jewish position.

The Final
Straw

On July 11, 1947, the Exodus left
Sete, France,
for Palestine carrying 4,515 refugees. On
July 18, the ship had just about reached Gaza when
it was intercepted by the British and forced
to dock in Haifa.
England’s
policy had been to deport illegal refugees
to detention camps in Cyprus, but Bevin decided
to employ a new tactic to discourage the
immigrants; the refugees would be sent back
to their original point of departure. In
keeping with this policy, the passengers
of the Exodus were
herded onto three British prison ships and
sent back to Sete. When the ships arrived
on the 29th, however, the refugees refused
to leave the ships. The London correspondent
for Haaretz, Aryeh Felbaum,
described what he saw:

On approaching the Ocean
Vigour I witnessed
the most terrible spectacle I have ever
seen in my life. It was a spectacle I
shall never forget. On the deck, in narrow,
very high cages, worse than those in
a zoo, surrounded by barbed wire, were
crowded together my brothers and sisters
of all ages. There the sun had beaten
down on their heads for 18 days at sea.
They had not even been able to lie down
at night. Between the cages stood red
bereted guards isolating each cage.33

On August 22, the ships
left Sete for Hamburg where they landed on
September 9. The refugees aboard the Empire
Rival left the ship quickly
because they had left a bomb in the hold.
The other two shiploads of people tried to
remain on the ships, resisting any effort
to displace them. Eventually, all three ships
were emptied of their human cargo and delivered
into the waiting arms of the Germans who
interned them in camps.

While the tragedy of the Exodus was being
played out, a new drama was unfolding in
Palestine. On July 12, the Irgun finally
succeeded in kidnaping two British officers,
Sergeants Cliff Marin and Mervyn Paice. The
British, aided by the Haganah, launched a
massive search for the missing men but were
unable to locate them. For over two weeks
there was no word on the sergeants. During
that period 13 British were killed and 77
wounded in underground attacks while only
one terrorist was killed. Then, on July 29,
three Irgunists involved in the Acre
breakout were hung.

We recognize no one-sided
laws of war. If the British are determined
that their way out of the country should
be lined by an avenue of gallows and of
weeping fathers, mothers, wives, and sweethearts,
we shall see to it that in this there is
no racial discrimination. The gallows will
not be all of one color...Their price will
be paid in full.34

The same day the Irgun hung the two sergeants and booby-trapped
their bodies.

As usual, the Jewish
Agency issued denunciations.
For example, Shertok said: “It is
mortifying to think that some Jews should
have become so depraved by the horrible
iniquities in Europe as to be capable of
such vileness.”35

This
time the British could not be so easily appeased,
the soldiers went on a rampage attacking
cars and buses in Tel Aviv. Cafes and shops
were also targets of the soldiers’ rage
which left 5 Jews dead, 15 seriously injured,
and many more bruised.

The impact of the hanging of the sergeants
was naturally outrage, but it was also symbolized
by the Manchester Guardian headline: “Time
To Go.” Bell explains the prevailing
attitude:

The Guardian was perceptive;
for the wave of revulsion in Britain was
directed as much against British presence
and tactics as against Jewish terror: the
exhausted Exodus refugees dragged screaming
back from the Promised Land, the death
of two young men trapped in a humiliating
and pointless struggle against a persecuted
people, the weekly lists of dead and maimed
that brought no thanks from either Jew
or Arab. So, instead of adamant demands
for vengeance and reprisals, as some expected,
the consensus gradually formed, as the
Guardian predicted, that the time for evacuation
had arrived.36

The Irgun and Lehi were
not about to ease the pressure on the British.
On August 8, 1947, Sternists attacked trains
near Haifa and
Hedera. On September 26, Sternists
robbed Barcley’s Bank in Tel
Aviv and,
three days later, Irgunists blew up the police
headquarters in Haifa,
killing 10 and wounding 54. After a relatively
quiet October, violence flared again in November.
On the 5th, four soldiers were shot in an
outdoor café in Haifa.
Eight days later, four British civilians
were gunned down on a Haifa street
corner and Lehi avenged
the shooting of three school girls and one
boy training for the gang by tossing grenades
into a café, killing
one soldier and injuring 27. Two policemen
were also shot in Jerusalem.
The following day two more soldiers and two
policemen were killed.

The Underground Surfaces

When the United
Nations finally voted to partition Palestine,
the vast majority of Jews were overjoyed.
True, the Jewish state was not as big as
they had hoped, and its checkerboard configuration
was going to be difficult to defend, but
at last, after 2,000 years, there was to
be a Jewish state again in Palestine. There
were a minority of Jews who were not satisfied;
however, among them were the members of
the Irgun and Lehi.
This was Begin’s reaction to the
UN decision:

The partition of the
Homeland is illegal. It will never be recognized.
The signature by institutions and individuals
of the partition agreement is invalid.
It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was
and will forever be our capital. Eretz
Israel will be restored to the people of
Israel. All of it. And for ever.37

Violence erupted immediately
after the UN decision
as Arab mobs attacked Jews. The underground,
which had concentrated all its efforts on
driving the British out of Palestine, now
had a new enemy to confront. According to Begin,
the first counterattacks were launched on
December 11-13, 1947.38 On December 29,
the first wanton act against civilians was
carried out when a bomb placed at the Damascus
Gate in Jerusalem exploded
killing 15 Arabs and wounding more than 50.
On January 7, 1948, Irgunists pushed a barrel
bomb loaded with scrap metal into a crowd
at a bus stop near Jaffa
Gate, which killed
17 Arabs and wounded 50 more.

The British remained an
obstinate enemy. They had taken the position
of “neutrality,” refusing
to cooperate in the implementation of the partition
resolution and retaining control
over Palestine. Even as that control began
to slip away and the country began to slip
into war, the British maintained their blockade,
preventing immigrants who would be needed
in the upcoming fight, from entering the
country. Their neutrality also required them
to enforce prohibitions against possessing
arms even as the Arabs were attacking Jewish
convoys and settlements. Meanwhile, Arab
guerrillas were infiltrating the country
with British knowledge. In addition,
while an arms ban was being enforced
against the Jews (the U.S. maintained an
embargo throughout the war), Britain was
arming the Arabs, directly through a subsidy
to Transjordan, whose legion would soon invade
Palestine (under the leadership of a British
officer) and, indirectly, through an arms
agreement with Iraq signed on January 9,
1948.

On February 12, 1948, the
British arrested four members of the Haganah and
turned them over to an Arab mob in Jerusalem,
which shot one and castrated the others before
hacking them to death.69. Afterward, the Haganah resisted being disarmed. Two weeks later,
Sternists launched an “all-out” attack
on British troops in Jerusalem.
An attack on a British troop transport February
29 near Rehovot killed five and wounded 35.

The British were committed
to pull out of Palestine, so the militants
believed they had achieved their objective.
In addition, by April 1948, the infiltration
of Arab guerrillas and increasing severity
of fighting with these irregular forces
caused a shift in priorities from battling
British forces to fighting the Arabs.

War
Approaches

Though Israel had not yet been formally
established, an undeclared war over Palestine
was already in progress. The Haganah was
engaged in a desperate effort to break the
Arab blockade that was strangling the Jews
in Jerusalem and beginning to mount operations
with an eye toward improving the future state’s
security. The underground groups were now
openly cooperating in some of these operations.
One of the most controversial was the assault
on Deir
Yassin on April 9, which killed more
than 100 Arabs, including many civilians.

A more significant battle,
from a military standpoint, took place at
the end of the month when the Irgun decided
to attack the predominantly Arab town of Jaffa. Begin claimed
that Arab attacks emanating from Jaffa had
killed or injured nearly a thousand Jews.
Although this is probably an exaggeration,
snipers and Arab mobs threatened Tel
Aviv’s civilian population. Begin also
feared that Jaffa would
be used by the Arabs to bombard Tel
Aviv once the British withdrew.

The Irgun assault
on Jaffa stimulated
another Arab exodus. This time some 60,000
Arabs fled their homes. Begin claimed
they left because of “the name of their
attackers and the repute which propaganda
had bestowed on them” and “the
weight of our bombardment.” It
was probably the second factor that had the
dominant impact since “confusion and
terror, deepened by the noise of the battle
raging at no great distance from the central
streets, reigned in the town.”39

The Irgun succeeded in neutralizing Jaffa as a military threat, but it was prevented
from capturing the city by the intervention
of British forces.

Meanwhile, Arab forces were also changing
the situation on the ground and engaging
in their own efforts to improve their strategic
position in advance of the planned invasion
by the surrounding Arab armies. For example,
on May 4, the Arab Legion launched a devastating
attack on the settlement at Kfar
Etzion killing
240 people, many after they had surrendered.
There were only four survivors.

The Arab Invasion

On May 14, 1948, just after Israel declared
its independence,
five Arab armies (Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Iraq)
invaded Israel. Their intentions were declared
by Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the
Arab League: “It will be a war of annihilation. It will be a momentous massacre in history that will be talked about like the massacres of the Mongols or the Crusades.”40

Despite their large populations,
at the time of the invasion the Arab armies
were comprised of only 80,000 men. The Haganah had 60,000 trained fighters, a third of whom
had combat experience, but on May 12, only
18,900 people were fully mobilized, armed,
and prepared for war. The Jews’ strategic
position was even worse according to Collins:

In almost every instance
the Arabs held the superior terrain. In
Tulkarm they were less than ten miles from
the sea and the possibility of cutting
the Yishuv in
half. The Arab communities of Lydda and
Ramle were only minutes from the heart
of Tel
Aviv.
The Negev seemed
wide open to Egypt’s armor. Jerusalem,
above all, remained completely cut off.41

The underground, which had
been coming closer and closer to the surface
finally was able to come out into the open
after the proclamation of the new state.
After May 15, the vast majority of the underground
was absorbed into the Zahal, the Israeli
Defense Forces,
which was composed primarily of Haganah members.
On May 28, Lehi formally
disbanded as 850 of its fighters marched
together to join the Zahal.

The activities of the underground
did not cease entirely. Two events stand
out. The first involved an effort by the Irgun to
bring in a ship laden with arms. The Altalena tried
to land at Kfar Vitkim on June 20, 1948.
The leadership of the new state feared that
the remaining dissidents were a threat to
their authority and suspected a possible
coup attempt. Ben-Gurion ordered
the Zahal to prevent the ship from landing.
The Irgun resisted and, after suffering a number of
casualties, withdrew the ship and headed
for Tel
Aviv where the Zahal welcomed it
with a barrage of shells. During what soon
became an all-out battle the Altalena was
set on fire and had to be abandoned. The
fighting left 14 Irgunists dead and 69 wounded
while two members of Zahal were killed and
six wounded.

The other incident took
place as the war with the Arabs was winding
down and the UN had
appointed Count
Folke Bernadotte to mediate settlement
talks. Bernadotte was a respected Swedish
diplomat who had formulated a proposal to
end the fighting, which involved Israel ceding
most of the Negev to
the Arabs and receiving in return more of
the Galilee in
the north. The provisional government of
Israel rejected the plan. The remaining members
of Lehi saw
it as a threat to Israel’s
existence, and they considered Bernadotte
a Nazi collaborator
and a British pawn. On September 16, Bernadotte
was assassinated by a group called Hazi
ha-Moledeth (Fatherland
Front), which was just a cover for Lehi.
In all likelihood, the assassination was
carried out by a very small number of ex-Lehi members acting on their own. No one
was ever convicted for the murder.42

Conclusion

When the war ended so did the terrorist
activity of the Jewish underground.

The members went on to found political parties
and become respected citizens of Israel.
The most well known was Menachem Begin, who
founded the right-wing opposition Herut
party and later served as Prime
Minister. Begin’s
economics minister, Yaacov Meridor, had preceded Begin as the head of the Irgun. Yitzhak
Shamir,
Begin’s foreign minister and later
prime minister, was a leader of Lehi.

The gaining of respectability is seen by
some as evidence that the dissidents were
not terrorists but, as F.F.I.’s initials
implied, freedom fighters. Begin uses an
etymological argument in The
Revolt in an
attempt to show that the word “terror” could
not be applied to a revolutionary war of
liberation which is what they had undertaken.
He makes a more convincing argument based
on the Irgun’s designs:

In building our organization,
too, we created no group of assassins to
lurk in wait for important victims. From
foundation to attic we set up our underground
as an army which planned attacks on the
most vital enemy targets, which shook the
very foundations of the enemy’s
military establishment and his civil rule,
which brought about enemy losses in the
course of military attacks. We began, it
is true, with a small underground army,
numbering not more than several hundreds.
But our strength increased pari passu with
the intensification of the struggle ...We
were not a “terrorist” group — neither
in the structure of our organization, in
our methods of warfare, nor in spirit.43

Begin and
his cohorts attached a great deal more significance
on their impact than they deserved. After
all, terrorism had little impact on the British
resolve to stay in Ireland. What impact they
did have was mainly negative, particularly
in terms of the publicity they gave to Palestine.
The militants did put Palestine at the center
of the world stage, but the international
community, the media, the Jewish leadership,
and most of the Yishuv considered
the Irgun and Lehi terrorists. Brenner explains their actions
as “a reflection of the international ‘terrorism,’ lawlessness
and disrespect for human life which characterized
the 1940’s.”44 The notion that
the ends justify the means was certainly
implicit in the underground ideology, but
it did not start out that way.

The underground evolved
from an organization designed to protect
Jewish settlements into a human smuggling
operation that succeeded in bringing more
than 100,000 illegal immigrants into Palestine
between 1934 and May 1948. An additional
65,000 were intercepted by the British between
1946 and February 1948 and interned on Cyprus.
The possibility of partitioning Palestine
generated ideological splits that fragmented
the Jewish community into those who favored
a political solution and those who believed
a military campaign was necessary to liberate
Palestine. Even the militants were willing
to take the political route, however, when
that option appeared promising. When diplomacy
failed, violence was in their view the only
alternative.